Below is an email I sent to the Filmoteca UNAM, which is currently hosting a film festival, where Beshir will be showing Faya Dayi, and holding a discussion with a Black American filmmaker Saul Williams titled: Liberation Cinema: Binary Dislocations and the Cinema and the Black Diaspora.
Dear Filmoteca UNAM,You are presenting a program with Jessica Beshir, where Beshir will show her film Faya Dayi, and conduct a discussion with Saul Williams.Although Beshir presents herself as half Mexican, she grew up mostly in the southern Oromo region of Ethiopia, and in the United States.I have written about Beshir's film, and discuss its promotion of a drug culture in the name of a (non-Christian) spirituality, where Oromo Muslims chew this leaf in the tradition of pre-Christian ancestors. My article was published in various Ethiopian online magazines, both in the US and in Ethiopia:This khat is devastating the Oromo youth, who live in constant khat-induced euphoria. The current Prime Minister of Ethiopia, PM Abiy, is concentrating on this region, to remove this khat influence, and to enlarge the working and living conditions of these communities.This is what Beshir will not tell you in her presentations, since one of her agendas is secession (if not separation) of the Oromo region from Ethiopia. The vast majority of the Oromo do not want this, and this secessionist movement, of which Beshir is a part, is confined to mostly US/Canada residing Oromo groups who get their funding from American and Canadian anti-Ethiopia agencies.I am an equal opportunity freedom-advocate. If you are an adult, you can do what you want.But, if what you do harms, or destroys, your surroundings, then I will protest.But I must, in the end, rephrase my belief. I believe that God has given us the ability to judge good from evil. All Ethiopians know that khat is evil, since it provides no nourishment for people, and it destroys the agriculture, as well as communities and cultures. My genuine reaction to Beshir's film is that it is indeed evil. For this reason especially, I denounce it, and consequently Faya Dayi's message.I know Mexico from my two years there. I lived in Mexico City, and in a nearby rural region, in the Solis Valley. I studied Mexican culture, film, society and politics. I became fluent in Spanish in a short six months, although I was communicating easily much before that. My Ethiopian heritage fit well with the Mexican culture.In the name of the "oppressed" of the Oromo (whose "oppression" I have refuted in my article, and provided historical context), Beshir purports to side with the "negra" of the world. I believe this is a handle she is using to promote her film wherever people respond to "oppression," and in the Mexican case, it could be "being black."Therefore, Faya Dayi is not an Ethiopian film, and in the end, it does not represent Mexico. Beshir holds many tickets - Ethiopian, Mexican, American. But what is she, really: Black, Mixed, Ethiopian, White? And in whose interests is she making this film, other than her own identity drama of "discovery?"Sincerely,Kidist Paulos AsratArt and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat - (For more on my writings on Faya Dayi and Beshir, please use these search terms in the "search box" provided on the website)